House Hoth Fictional Direction Survey

Hey Hothers (Hothians? Hothites? Someone please help me with the pronoun),

By now you should have seen our new Quaestor’s email asking for each of us to fill out a survey about the direction of our House. I spoke to Esca and until we have an official group or resource to converse freely without bogging down the clan channel (we didn’t want to be spamming Satele with our conversations) we’d like to open up this thread on the forums so we can debate ideas, ask questions, and just in general brainstorm in addition to the survey. If you haven’t looked at the survey yet please click here

I personally have some questions, but I will add them below.

~RK~

Looking through the survey, I am very interested in each of these options and while the third option does offer a mixture of the other two - mixing things together does change things a bit. To start off my brainstorming, I was curious where Hoth has been up to do (I apologize for my ignorance, I am just recently returned to COU and am unaware what Hoth specifically has been up to)? What has Hoth’s identity been up to date? Will this be included moving forward?

In terms of specific questions for these options:

For Flotilla-
How would this work into the new COU military structure? Are the ships we would use be directly under our control, or would they be on requisition to us?
Would KoA and any future BTs be located on these ships as well?
Will we be involved in any setting up of the world with this option? Or whille Satele be on point for defense of the planet?

Planet-
Are we getting a planet to ourselves in the new system or is its going to be like Tython’s system and we all share only one planet in the system?

Mixture-
Admittedly this option is more of an interest to be because it allows the best of both worlds, but if we take this route how will we be different from Satele? With the whole reset is there any coordination with the Satele QUA to make sure they have their own stuff and propose and we have our own unique role?

Hoth was founded on being explorers and frontiersmen, surviving in Kamuekiko. It began with the founding of Fort Pernicar and the Butcher of Kamuekiko series, and would have continued into a much larger story arc of my own making had New Tython not been slated for destruction. We would be… about a third of the way through Sons of Tomorrow at the moment, a storyline that would have dealt with the aftermath of Hoth’s invasion of Kamuekiko and slaughter of the Harakoans (many of the truths we cling to depend on our point of view), and eventually culminated in a Harakoan Jedi being revered as a prophet and bringing a lasting peace across the region before we head off-world and deal with a large droid army and a Sith Lord at home.

None of that really got off the ground; by the time I had Sons of Tomorrow written up, mapped out and submitted for approval, New Tython’s fate was already in question and a month later it was destroyed. The Vendetta took much of our attention since then, and I had created a short summary for the DC for a new planet, devastated by a meteor impact, that we would have been colonizing, exploring and conquering alongside the NPC faction that does all our building and food harvesting for us.

To address your specific questions, based on what I know:
For the Flotilla, the early questions have already been determined by Turel and A’lora, and will likely be explained in A’lora’s upcoming report. The organisational structure I’ve seen could make the Flotilla option a little tricky, but I’d rather hold off judgement until the new fleet and the JSF system has been officially explained.

For your planet questions, yes, we have been looking at our own planet. I created two proposals, one of which was shot down for being very incompatible with the new Clan system. I sent out an email asking for feedback about these proposals from my Summit and my superiors (and a certain tree) on 18 March, and AFAIK the second proposal was largely well received. I’d prefer having our own planet as our home, it does provide us with better customization options than what may be compatible with the Possessions / Fleets system.

For your mixture questions, I have raised an anticipated issue with SeNet / Satele, and if the comparison is difficult to avoid we may need to turn to story-driven approaches to distinguish ourselves. However, having a planet of our own does offer us a lot of potential to offer a truly unique experience, and some coordination with overall objectives will help to keep the Flotilla side of things fresh and even if it is not truly one of a kind, story driven approaches can make a world of difference in the experience.

The new House Summit will be working towards ensuring that the entire House’s feedback is taken into consideration, and I hope to continue to offer as much support and help as I can reasonably manage now that I have little else outside of RL to juggle

Yo all!

Okay, granted I don’t know all the back plot / details of what’s going to happen to the Clan as a whole, but I think the hybrid idea in the survey would work best. I didn’t go into much detail there, but I think having us operate out of ships keeps us mobile and harder to hit, but at the same time we definitely need a home base because realistically we can’t all live aboard ship indefinitely. All of us also living aboard ships is rather exclusionary and won’t help us gel together as a House.

This is why I suggested a hollowed out asteroid in the middle of a large asteroid field. This gives us the chance to have on central location where we can live, AND gives us a chance to use the asteroid field to our advantage by setting up a vast network of sensor arrays and automated/manned defensive systems to whittle away at any incoming enemy fleet. This also helps us disperse the House assets some so that even if say a SSD comes charging in to wipe out the home base our R&D folks can escape, or something similar. Heck, theoretically if we make a small enough “escape pod” at the main asteroid we can equip that pod with a hyperdrive and jump out in case it gets hot and heavy. Note this also allows us to get creative with hollowed out asteroids (An R&R asteroid, anyone? Or one specifically built to have the Mon Cals/Quarren among us to enjoy something with the life support more attuned to their liking?), allowing us varied “terrain” options, fictionally.

This would also give our ships (Already destined to be on the smaller side of the cap ship list) a fighting chance to be able to use the asteroid field to our advantage as cover, being able to flit around as needed while pecking away at larger, far less maneuverable ships.

Tossing out ideas here.

Let me put on my military reformer hat for a second. It’s difficult to definitively answer this, since eventually our units will be a part of the possessions system when it launches, and we don’t really know what that’ll look like just yet. In the meantime, our current navy setup has certain units assigned to the Houses (X-Wings, a transport and a corvette, iirc) and I think a few bigger units assigned to the Clan as a whole. I suspect we’ll maintain that sort of thing going forward. Esca and Ed will get some say in what COU’s military looks like in the future, and if Shan and Hoth have different focuses, they should probably have different units to reflect that.

Could we have a big enough navy to support a flotilla? Well, right now we have a pretty tiny fleet approved as a stopgap, so it wouldn’t be much of a flotilla. However, this is a temporary arrangement and we still have more points to spend on units under the current system (again, the possessions system is above my pay grade right now). This is definitely an option I’d want to explore with Esca, and if it’s what the people want, I’ll do my best to give it to them.

And now let me put on my Shan AED hat. There was some coordination between Nathan and the Shan Summit, and both House planets go through Turel and A’lora who will point out issues and guide us into designing a great system. Mako and I have a lot of respect and affection for Esca and Ed, so I’m sure there will be plenty of coordination going forward. I don’t want to go into details on the Shan planet here, but I think the ideas mentioned in the survey each provide Hoth with opportunities to do something cool and unique.

Fort Pernicar and Seher were on the same planet, surrounded by the same native species, and still had very different vibes to them. We’re all Odanites here, so of course there will be similarities, but the Summits, Battleteams, and members are different between the Houses, and I think that will shine through in the lore we develop. I’m sure Tisto and the Knights will take the lead here, and they have a very different flavor from Disciples of Baas and Ooroo.

I don’t foresee any issues with the JTF system. COU has an army and a navy and an intelligence organization all at the Clan level, and a good chunk of each of those is delegated to Hoth’s QUA. I don’t think there’s any current or future restriction that, say, Hoth’s naval detachment has to be the same as Satele’s, or that army and navy have to be the same size, or anything that would torpedo the flotilla idea. The bigger concern is that we, like the other Clans, have a finite amount of points to buy units with. If you’re envisioning the entire Rebel fleet in RotJ, well, you might need to scale that down a bit.

Arch is correct here, the JTF system which will form the cornerstone of the new military is designed with flexibility in mind. The Houses are encouraged to take different paths and roles. Also, the Clan as a whole has finite resources that I will allocate as best I can but “small but deadly” is a theme that will cover not just our fleet but all the fleets of the Brotherhood once Possessions launches.

Ladies and Gentleman,

I’m glad you are all taking part in this discussion and I’d like to echo Turel and Arch’s Thoughts and words for a moment. Esca and I are in contact with Both Clan and Shan’s summit. We also know our fleet is relatively small now but it would still work for all 3 options. I, for one have a favorite but will not mention that here to bias any of your opinions. I want to hear your unbiased opinions.

Which ever direction we go Hoth member’s will be helping us with the details and more importantly helping us write Hoth’s story. Every story we write will be for the House and it’s members. We will grow and change as one and what one of us does should affects all of us in some way or another.

So please keep sending in your ideas, thoughts and comments!